The best puzzles ever

September 28, 2009

My DS had been consigned to a drawer for the last couple of months, but it's getting a workout now.

Within two days of each other, Scribblenauts and Professor Layton and Pandora's Box arrived at the Screen Play bunker last week, and suddenly my DS is my constant companion again almost everywhere I go.

Both are superlative puzzle games that I am enjoying immensely, full of clever and fascinating conundrums.

Even if a puzzle proves maddeningly difficult to the point of frustration and aggravation, you typically feel a strong compulsion to stick to the task, and the satisfaction derived from completion is one of video gaming's sweetest treats.

I don't want to spoil any of the fun for people planning to play Scribblenauts or Pandora's Box, but today I'm keen to hear about some of in-game puzzles that you have most enjoyed solving over the years.

Feel free to also share about the times when you encountered such hair-pulling frustration that you contemplated giving up, or worse still, you were tempted to consult a cheats page.

You can also use the comments section below to tell us what you have been playing lately.

As we gear up for Christmas, major new releases like Halo 3: ODST, Need for Speed: Shift, Scribblenauts, FIFA 10, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Pandora's Box are starting to come thick and fast...

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Recent comments

During my time with scribblenauts, ive found that 99% of puzzles can be solved with Rope, a Jetpack and God.

Thom

September 28, 2009

09:27 AM

I especially love solving puzzles in non-puzzle games. I like the transition from "twitch" to "think." I was the guy that enjoyed the physics puzzles in HF2.

My fabourite ever though is Portal, particularly after you leave the testing area, and have to use the skills you've learnt to escape the lab. So cool escaping the fire pit at the last minute, redirecting rockets, etc.

On a completely unrelated note, I was interviewed by Good-Game at Eminence. I did a nice plug for Screenplay (which will hopefully make the cut). I'm the bald guy in the jacket that looks like an idiot because I can't answer any of Rei's questions. She was openly hostile by the end. I actually apologised to her after filming, but she stormed off...

Thom

September 28, 2009

09:31 AM

@Jason,

Also, thanks for the tickets to eminence, they were great!

Tim S

September 28, 2009

10:18 AM

To be honest, Myst (and only the first title) still hails as one of my most treasured gaming experiences. Firstly at the time, the ray-traced graphics blew me away, but even now that they look terribly dated, I still appreciate the aesthetics and the audio-design that combine to create the atmosphere of the game.

Why it stands as one of my all-time favourites is that I didn't fine a single one of the puzzles illogical or even semi-logical. A few of them stumped me for a bit, but when I finally found the solutions, none of them ever struck me as too obtuse or unfair. Everything you need to complete the puzzles is available to you in the gameworld. It's one of the very few times a game has made absolute sense without exception; no shoehorned mechanics, no shortcutting or 'cheating' from a coding/mechanic perspective. Sure, it had almost no actual gameplay at all, but I guess this kind of thing really appeals to me. I'd have to say that Syberia (also just the first game) came in pretty close to Myst as far as the logic puzzles went.

As for modern gaming, and perhaps the whole Myst fetish might explain it, I absolutely adored the sliding on ice block-puzzles in that cave in Twilight Princess. I know, it's heresy to love block-puzzles, but I just really enjoyed figuring out in reverse-order exactly where I had to put the blocks to act as stoppers for the one I wanted to put over the solution plate. I could probably do that all day... with the exception of waggling the remote to smack the blocks in place of just pressing a button.

death to nerds

September 28, 2009

10:54 AM

DS is getting some serious play atm. New Puzzle Quest game, New Game + on Chrono Trigger, some Civ and Mario Kart plus Scribble will be picked up this week.

Will pick up Pandora as and when and if I finish up Village.

luverly_5pam

September 28, 2009

10:59 AM

I have always been a fan of games that include puzzles, even if they are not a key part of the gameplay. For example, I am a huge fan of the Silent Hill series. The most common thing you will hear mentioned about SH is its atmosphere, but rarely do you hear praise for its marvellous puzzles. If my memory serves me correctly, from SH2 onwards there was even seperate difficulty settings for puzzles and gameplay. I wish i could play Silent Hill 2 again, if only my PS3 had backwards compatibility...

Weekend was all aboyt Arkham Asylum for me. Currently missioning around the island looking for all the Riddler challenges before attending to the final mission. Also the odd bit of Bubble Bobble as a sorbet to cleanse the palate.

Mongey

September 28, 2009

11:46 AM

Braid has to be my favourite puzzle game of all time. The 6 or 7 hours it took me to finish were some of the best gaming hours I have had

Gaming wise i had no time on the weekend . I got 10 minutes with the forza 3 demo friday night before going out. Thought it was pretty good . Will buy it .

tehkellays

September 28, 2009

12:02 PM

This weekend was all about Halo3 ODST. My boyfriend and I are trying to play through it co-op, going well so far and it's heaps of fun :D
I also played some Halo3 when my bf took ODST to his friend's place.

DexX

September 28, 2009

12:46 PM

My two problems with Scribblenauts are:

1) The controls! Dear God, the controls!!! The physics engine is also frustratingly quirky.

2) For all its promise, it's an incomplete game. Many items are missing, many do not behave in a logical manner, and many of the puzzles are frustratingly vague or have very specific solutions that preclude perfectly logical ones from working.

One example of #2 was the level where you had a car with smoke coming from it, and you had to "power it up and drive it home"...

What did it need? Well, I cracked and checked the internet - it needed electricity. Lightning strike, battery with jumper leads, power cable from the nearby power pole, even an electric eel... all of these worked.

Since when has electricity made a car work when the ENGINE HAS BEEN SMOKING???

[SPOILERS END HERE...]

In my opinion, Scribblenauts falls too easily into the old point-and-click puzzle trap, whereby you can't just do something logical, but have to get inside the head of the designer and try to work out what he was thinking.

That, to me, is the exact antithesis of what the game was supposed to be.

I'm coming down hard, but I am enjoying it for the most part. DS carts have very little space on them, so it is a remarkable technical achievement.

I wonder, though, if later versions on other platforms will make the DS version look like a primitive prototype.

DexX

September 28, 2009

12:52 PM

Today's highlight from the Screen Play spam-pit: Dream Interpretation! A secret list of the facts that "they don't want you to know".

...

*blink*

Riiiiight...

The FBI is trying to suppress your understanding of why you dreamed you were naked in your year eight maths class, and your teacher wasn't your teacher but was Dan Ackroyd for some reason, and then when you left the classroom you were in a train station and this guy wanted to sell you copies of Woman's Weekly...

Sorry, totally off-topic, but the bizarre spam Screen Play receives offers me no end of amusement.

Last week it was Lois Griffin hentai. (Seriously, don't Google that.)

Tim S

September 28, 2009

12:57 PM

@DexX - You are describing one of my all-time greatest issues with gaming, as I vaguely alluded to in one of my 'Things I learnt from gaming' posts; when all else fails, try and think like the developers/designers or worse, the marketing department. It is exactly as you say, the antithesis of what gaming is.

We've got a few big problems with gaming, though none I think are insurmountable... someone just has to actually try and do it, even if it fails, which I think more-or-less some dev's are attempting to a greater or lesser degree. Simply put; developers are still designing many elements of gameplay in the same ways we've been creating them for years... mainly because that's how we've always done them. Gamers already have a dense mechanic-vocabulary with which to tackle problems; most of the time we engage our game-vocabulary rather than our life/logic one which Scribblenauts attempts to tap into. The problem comes in where the product has still been designed traditionally, and we too quickly revert back to our knowledge of the habits we know developers are in.

People are harsh on these things to varying degrees. I have a hard time of convincing some of my hardcore buddies of this issue because it almost doesn't exist for them; they always want to have their gamersense engaged, and to a larger degree I don't really have a problem with this. It is however becoming an increasing issue as two main design-elements become popular; realism and player creativity. Marketers will tell us we have freedom to approach a problem (puzzle/level etc.), but the reality is far from it.

another scribblenauts gripe...the overpowered desk fan!
I was on one level where i had to rescue a beached whale. I summoned a fan...and blew it back out to sea with it. forget summoning something like a wall or iceberg to stop a moving object, a simple desk fan is capable of gale force winds. either that or everything in the game is made from cardboard.

AllyBee

September 28, 2009

01:41 PM

Just started Pandora's Box this morning on the train (funnily enough, for those who have also started). Love it! Haven't done any puzzling for a while (played through Phantom Hourglass lately, and have been giving Sims 2 a run again).
My only gripe thus far are all the comments attached to items that don't turn up a puzzle, a hint coin or a conversation - a momentarily hold-up that grates after a while. Let me get on with tapping everything in sight compulsively!

Prime felt his core begin to overloa as he took hold of Megatron's firm, steely gun barrel...

Blurry

September 28, 2009

02:06 PM

@ Dexx and in defense of Scribblenauts

/cheekyface

"power it up and drive it home".
It doesn't say "mechanical failure" or "in need of gas". It says "power". This to me means plug it in.

cf. "Did you turn the power on?" "The power cord is unplugged" and "it runs on battery power".

There's also a whopping great power pole next to the car. THIS IS A CLUE!!! :)

The smoke was admittedly a bit of a red herring, but was likely the best way to indicate there was a problem with the car.

/seriousface

As a result of the limitations of the system, some of the levels are pretty cryptic, but that's half the fun.

It is certainly a lot better than most games in allowing for logical solutions. It is also much better than most games in allowing completely obtuse solutions. It also throws up some of the most hilarious fails I have seen since Worms 2.

Perhaps you are the type that prefers elegant solutions to everything - I'm not and enjoy the bizarre way Scribblenauts works. For the record, grab the nearest schoolaged child and let them do it.

Adult brains are so frightfully dull, as evidenced by Symon apparently using the same three objects over and over - sure you can, but where's the fun in that?

Personally, I don't get frustrated when a "logical" solution doesn't work. They don't always work in real life either. I do find great joy in making an illogical solution work though - especially those involving yaks.

On my own negative note, I was somewhat disappointed that you can't scare a sheep away with a "New Zealander".

luverly_5pam

September 28, 2009

02:30 PM

@ Blurry

Nah bro, us Kiwis are far too tender to scare the sheep off!

Smoolander

September 28, 2009

02:34 PM

Does Puzzle Quest count as a puzzle game. That would be my favourite in a long time.

As for the playing front, finished up Shivering Isles expansion yesterday for Oblivion in a post grand final depression.

Now I've fully crossed to the dark side by picking ODST today for $31 - after getting EB to price match Big W and trading in 3 old games that came to $27, plus they gave a $10 bonus for trading in 3. So $31 for what essentially amounts to an expansion pack and some extra maps has me feeling reasonably not ripped off. Just slightly dirty.

Symon

September 28, 2009

02:36 PM

"Adult brains are so frightfully dull, as evidenced by Symon"

I could take that as a nice compliment, my brain has never been described as adult before.

If not, I suggest you write "foot" and "mouth" in scribblenauts, combine the two and see what happens.

Misty

September 28, 2009

02:44 PM

@ Mr Ak

LOL. Rule 34.

@ anyone waiting for Scribblenauts

An informant has told me that Scribblenauts will be released in Australia today. I'm picking up my pre-order this arvo.

I don't mind bizarre solutions working - that's part of the fun - but stopping perfectly valid solutions from working as well, either artificially or through neglect, is just irritating.

In the case of the tornado level, most of my solutions involved exploiting physics glitches, which is a clear case of thinking like a gamer or designer, rather than "thinking like a child".

Incidentally, the Jersey Devil can beat the Chimera in a fight.

Ali

September 28, 2009

03:32 PM

@ Mr Ak

Rule 34 states that it must exist and I have it on good authority that not only does Megatron/Optimus Prime slash exist... but there are ones where they have little robot babies together. :/

*shudders*

Darryn

September 28, 2009

04:00 PM

Re-equianted myself with my plastic instruments for a few hours of Rock Band 2 last friday night, they had previously been packed away for the move into the city.

Sunday I spent at an arcade, first time I had been for a while... to my sheer delight I found they had a new machine: DJ Max Technica!!! (could be a k). This game is amazing, highly engrossing... and even though, thanks to a giant LCD mounted to the top of the machine, the other patrons could see I was quite the noob, it didnt bother me the slightest because the game put such a large smile on my face for all of the 20 minutes I spent on it.

If you have no point of reference for the series, DJ Max can be best summised as a Korean Beatmania, however this particular arcade version has a touch-screen mechanic that plays out more like Elite Beat Agents (NDS) on steroids.

2 of my all time favourite games combined to ensure I'll be going back for more before too long. (wonder how much a machine like that costs hmmm)

The rest of Sunday I spent playing Fire Emblem - Shadow Dragon on NDS, which I had picked up hours earlier. Im a big fan of the series and can endure the harsh death mechanic for the chance to produce that 1 divine run at a mission maximising EXP whilst minimising risk.

Blurry

September 28, 2009

04:14 PM

@ Dexx

So, what you are saying is, you would like the designers to have thought of every conceivable scenario, some rational, some bizarre, then programmed physics, AI, an entire dictionary woth of objects and their general behaviour accordingly?

Not asking for much there...

Incidentally, I used "hurricane shelter" which does work. Surely it's not that hard to rack the brain for a synonym...

In short, I reckon it's unfair to have too hard a go at the limitations when some of the achievements are significant.

@ Symon

I don't get the foot in mouth thing. You must admit, blitzing through it with only a handful of objects is dull.

I apologise if any offence was taken. Was merely pointing out that most adults go for the result, rather than having fun and being creative in getting there. This is very much a kids game, but in a good way.

DexX

September 28, 2009

04:32 PM

Blurry, the problem is that's exactly what the bragged they had done. If it wasn't obscene, trademarked, or abstract, it was in their dictionary and would operate as expected in the game world.

The game's slogan is "Write anything, solve everything".

I think I am entitled to gripe about a bit of false advertising, don't you?

I like the game, it's a lot of fun, and it really is an amazing technical achievement...

BUT...

This does not mean it is above criticism, and it is definitely due some serious criticism for its flaws.

I truly believe that in years to come Scribblenauts will be ported to other platforms that will allow bigger dictionaries, more detailed item interactions, a greater variety of art, more robust physics, and controls that don't suck.

When that happens, I think this DS version will be seen as the amazing prototype that showed what the IP might be capable of in future, the proof of concept that was great fun, but frustrating because of its flaws.

Until then, I'm still enjoying the DS version we have right now. It has its problems, and it makes me swear with frustration, but overall it's still fun.

P.S. Please keep in mind that I bought a DS in order to play Scribblenauts. That's right, I bought a game console in order to play this one game. Maybe I'm a little more sensitive than most to its flaws as a result, but that doesn't mean the flaws aren't there and aren't worthy of criticism.

Darryn

September 28, 2009

04:42 PM

DexX, may I suggest Elite Beat Agents ;) to cure what ails ya' on the DS.

Also theres no secret the DS is the only destination for puzzle games & RPG's... its hard for me to fathom the concept of buying the DS as being a mistake.

Currently I fill my hours with Fire Emblem, good game (well thus far anyway).

I appreciate scribblenauts as a concept sure, but I dont think I'll be picking it up... at least before it gets to a $20-30 magic mark.

DexX

September 28, 2009

05:07 PM

I'm thinking about Chrono Trigger and the various Dragon Quests. Problem is, I generally hate JRPGs, so I really don't know if I'll appreciate them.

DexX

September 28, 2009

05:09 PM

I'm also reading Richard Dawkins's latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, a neat lay-person's guide to the evidence for evolution. It's a surprisingly gripping read. I literally got it and Scribblenauts on the same day, so they've been competing fro day one.

death to nerds

September 28, 2009

05:44 PM

Chrono Trigger is a must.

It's a stone cold classic, one of the best games ever made.

Ignore Chuck D and believe the hype.

Ali

September 28, 2009

06:14 PM

@ DexX

Definitely pick up Chrono Trigger! It's an awesome game and is very accessible for someone not really into JRPGs. Give that a go before you try any Dragon Quest games though. I love JRPGs but found Dragon Quest hard to get into, the grinding can be fairly brutal and repetitive. I think the problem is that the DS Dragon Quests are remakes of old games so the mechanics and story seem a bit dated. That said, once I got into Dragon Quest V it's a great game. :)

Other JRPGs I'd recommend are FF4, any Pokemon game and for strategy RPGs Disgaea DS and Final Fantasy Tactic A2. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia is pretty good and I second Darryn's recommendation of Elite Beat Agents. :)

Mr Ak

September 28, 2009

06:32 PM

Interesting to note - the two people to comment on the megatron/optimus slash fiction were a)women and b) XKCD fans.

Too small a sample to draw any conclusions, must conduct larger test...

And I've just been reading ome of the Megatron/Optimus slash fiction, and it is awesome.

Mr Ak

September 28, 2009

08:22 PM

Correction: I believed Rule 34 originated with XKCD. I was wrong. 4chan, maybe?

WadeMcG

September 29, 2009

11:37 PM

I got The Beatles Rock Band game in the post just before the weekend. I got the Day Tripper achievement (and a number of others) out of the way. I also tried to get ahead of Dexx on some of the songs/chapter challenges (with varying results).
I also finally put on Fight Night Round 4, which I've had sitting on the shelf unplayed for the past two months for some inexplicable reason.

Tigerion

October 01, 2009

01:40 PM

Just finished playing through safecracker: the ultimate puzzle adventure. Great game for $5 on steam. Now looking for a way to get the rest of the developers games.

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